Faith In the Big Man Up North

I remember very well the childish hope as Christmas approached…hope that Santa would indeed fulfill that otherwise-unattainable wish…of a horse, a very expensive toy, [and later] a car.*  Still, I’m always amused with what the boys come up with.  Most notable this year is Kalen’s desire for this:

Image: The LEGO Group

Yep, that’s the $400 Lego Death Star.  Never mind that he pretty much just plays with the Minifigs all the time & has no patience for building.  Actually, now that I look at the thing, he probably wants it simply for all the Minifigs that come with it.  (Bingo!  He just snuck up behind me, and I couldn’t Alt-Tab out in time.  He’s now rattling on about all the cool people that come with it.)

Nicolas’s best request this year is for Astro Boy, the new-to-theaters movie, on DVD.  When I informed him that it wouldn’t be available on DVD in time for Christmas, he said, “Well, Santa will just have to do it, then.”  I don’t know if he still believes in Santa, if he’s hedging his bets and letting us think he does, or if he’s like his mom…wanting to believe in Santa, no matter what.

(Oh, and I think I’ll re-dub NaBloPoMo “NaBLOWPoMo,” since I blew it.  Oh well, 29 posts in 30 days!  I can do it!)

*I’m one of those people who has a small part of them still wishing Santa was a real-live guy with a real-live workshop, able to fulfill my every holiday dream, so it’s not that far-fetched for me to have wished Santa could have brought me a car when I was fifteen.

PhotoHunt: Veterans/Military

The Three Soldiers
at the Vietnam Memorial
17 May, 2009
~*~

PhotoHunt is a weekly meme posted by tnchick, where followers search their photographs for one to match the theme.  As I’m feeling spectacularly uncreative and not at all wordy tonight, I turn to PhotoHunt for blogging inspiration.

Weekend Checklist

The weekend is [almost] here!

I’ve had it about up to here* with the house still needing quite a bit of unpacking and organizing, so I’m making some specific goals for this weekend.

1. Find a place for everything in the kitchen.  There are about 7 smallish items for which I haven’t yet found homes.
2. Mop the kitchen/dining area floors.  Somehow, the house has the gall to get dirty before I’ve even managed to get everything unpacked.
3. Unpack & find places for the two still-packed bins of toys.
4. Hang Nicolas’s desk.
5. Create a mud-room like area in the garage.  There’s not enough room by the front door for all the rain boots & such.
6. Play with my family!

It’s not a particularly ambitious list, but if I manage to knock it all off, I’ll be content.  I’d like to spend about as much time on #6 as the rest combined, if possible.  I think it’s possible.

*Hand held at about chin level.  Maybe nose level.  Depends on when you ask me.

Beauty Is…

If you have a child in public school in the U.S. (or if you were once there yourself), chances are you’ve heard of the PTA’s annual art contest and show, Reflections.  I’ve been trying to get Nicolas to participate for several years now, but he’s always balked.  (Art isn’t his favorite pursuit.)  This year, however, his school required the fourth-graders to participate.

The theme this year is “Beauty is…”  Nicolas chose to interpret this through photography, specifically to showcase the beauty of our new hometown.  I gave him the camera one day on the walk home from school, and he had a great time.

He finally decided on the picture of the mossy rocks as his favorite, so I pulled up Photoshop and let him play around a bit with it.  He learned to crop, recolor, and even apply an action, finally ending up with this:

He titled it “Mossy Rocks at Sunset.”  I think his favorite part of the project was actually going to the craft store and picking out a mat for it.  My favorite part was finding, to my surprise, that he remembered exactly what he’d done in Photoshop when I asked him the next day.  I have a feeling I’m going to have to fight him for creative computer time in a few years.

Work With What You’ve Got

The mint walls are driving me crazy.

We’re renting, and our landlord has given us permission to paint if we’d like to.  We’ll definitely be painting the master bedroom (we already bought the paint), but we don’t want to invest too much time and money in repainting the house.

Still, the mint walls in the living room aren’t really up my alley.  Solution?  See what we can do to work with the mint walls.  I pulled up Photoshop yesterday evening to create a decor board and see if I could make the mint walls work with the other elements we have in that room.  I think I got it.  Here’s what I came up with:

There are four elements in the room that won’t be changed:

1. The mint green paint.

2. The gold silk drapes (which belong to the homeowner).

3. The piano.

4. The brown upholstered furniture.  I’ve been designing around these two pieces for years.  Yes, I know we could slip cover them, but we’re working on a tight budget.

The remaining furniture can be painted:

5. The small media cabinet and the side table will be done over in French White.  This will give the room a much more modern and fresh feel.

6. This is the part I’m not sold on.  Our TV cabinet is a solid oak piece that’s a little dated.  I think a greyish tone on the body and a dark stain on the top like this would bring it more up to date.  Jason prefers the idea of looking for a free piece on Craigslist to customize.  I think I might agree with him on that.

7. This is my vision for The Four Pound Wonder, a piece my Dad found at the local tip when we lived in England.  He paid £4 for the old wardrobe, which has been outfitted with shelves for linens and silver and the like.  I’d like to do it over in a subtle metallic finish like this, and replace the [again, dated] stained glass with hammered metalwork.  The metal finish would coordinate with the gold curtains and with the frame around our Bayeux piece (seen here).

8. This guitar photo is by my friend Melissa; she took it on a trip to Mexico last year.  I gave it to Jason last Christmas, and we haven’t put it up yet.  It is printed on metallic photo paper, and that, combined with the colors, ties it in with this room beautifully.

9. The accessories are from ZGallerie (Love!) and will be supplemented with thrift store finds in white, green & [subtle] gold.  (I’ll probably put the florals together myself, too.)

And that’s about it.  The decor board looks crowded, I know, but so does the room; that’s not about to change.  We have too much furniture for the space, which I think is another reason it’s driving me nuts.  I believe tying it all together with a conscious design and giving it some style will help relieve the feeling of clutter and too-tightness, since moving pieces out isn’t an option just now.

So what do you think?  Have you ever had to work around something that just didn’t sit right with you & make it work?

A Little Bit Metro?

One of my very favorite blogs, Young House Love, linked to this quick little style quiz at Ethan Allen today.

How surprised was I when I clicked through the series of photos that appealed to me and was presented with my results?

Very.

Metro?  I’m metro?  Uh, no, I’m a suburban girl, through and through.  Right?  But then, I started exploring their sample rooms for this style, and I quite liked three of them.

Yeah, I can do Metro.

1. Look at those white vases.  I know the whole “white grouping” thing is so popular as to be almost overdone these days, but I really am drawn to it.

2. The woven bench.

3. Lots of neutrals with splashes of color.

4. Geometric patterns.

The only thing missing is a certain measure of softness…something cozy.  I’m reminded of homes where I babysat as a teenager, when I was chilled after the kids had gone to bed and couldn’t for the life of me find an afghan or a quilt to cuddle under on the sofa.  Add a little coziness (and a personal touch or two) to these rooms, and I think they’d be close to perfect.

Too Good Not to Share

Have you stumbled across The Bright Side Project yet?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw it popping up on several of the blogs in my Google Reader, so I clicked over.  As it says in their FAQ’s:

The Bright Side Project is a website dedicated to daily giveaways.  Each day we feature a brand or product we think will add a little sunshine in your life.

Not only this, but The Bright Side Project is dedicated to supporting independent artisans.  They offer prizes both from well-known companies (E.L.F. Cosmetics!) and from etsy sellers.

Was I tempted to keep this wonderful site to myself?  Of course!  But that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the site, now, would it?  So hop on over and win something wonderful!

They Looked Great For a While

Last Sunday, after much agonizing over subject matter and scouring the internet for inspiration/patterns, we carved our pumpkins.

There were vampires…

…and skulls…

…and Buzz (Go Jackets!)…

…and even Count von Count, who declined to be photographed for this interview.  (All of the patterns were found on the internet, and I did not save links – sorry!  Except for Buzz…I created that stencil myself.)

You’ll notice I didn’t take too much care with the photography, because certainly, I would set these on the front porch soon enough for a quick photo session, as usual.  Yeah…did I mention the whole flu thing?  By the time it occurred to me to do anything about the pumpkins, it was Thursday.  I attempted to pick up my jack o’lantern, and my fingers went through its bottom.  Oh dear.  Upon closer inspection, we found that all four pumpkins were covered inside with a nice layer of mold and fuzzy, white “hair.”

We moved them out to the front porch, anyway, hoping we could at least light them on Halloween night, but by the next morning, they were caving in.  Since we haven’t set up a compost bin yet, they’re currently awaiting the garbage truck.  You should probably be glad I didn’t take pictures.

Happy Halloween!

Jason and the boys are currently out for Round II of The Great Candy Grab.  Round I ended with shivers, followed by a halftime with a giant pizza and the first half of The Sorcerer’s Stone, our usual Halloween night movie.  The boys donned hoodies under their costumes and hit the streets to see what else they could haul in.

How about those blasters?  I saw this tutorial linked on Geek Dad this week and immediately sent it to Jason.  (Not that I couldn’t – or wouldn’t! – make them myself, but he did ask what he could do to help.  He had fun with it, and he rarely gets to be involved in the Halloween costuming.)

In an effort not to pass Hamthrax H1N1 onto the entire neighborhood, we decided to leave our candy out on the porch for the neighbors.  In an additional effort not to let the first three kids get all the candy, I did this:

The boys are back, not-so-patiently waiting to restart the movie, so off I go.  Once they’re in bed, Jason and I will cross our fingers and hope AMC is showing some wonderful old Vincent Price movie.

Have a safe and spooky Halloween!

It Goes By Many Names (What’s One More?)

Today, the one I’ve seen several times is “Hamthrax.”  Heh, cute.

Whether you go all clinical (like we have around here), calling it H1N1, or can’t quite let go of the original, media-hyped Swine Flu! (OMG, PIG Flu! Like Bird Flu, only with hooves and a funny snout!), we seem to have welcomed it into our household this week.  The evidence is there, and I can only say we’ve been blessed with a pretty mild case.  It’s sure a lot more mild than the flu I had while pregnant with Nicky nearly ten years ago.  Now, that was a flu to write home to the sty about…*

But back to the Hamthrax H1N1.  Nicky came down with A Fever Sunday night, so of course he stayed home from school the next day, and I cancelled my Monday trip to Costco and my volunteer time at the library.  (Mondays = excitement. Yeah.)  Kalen skipped happily off to his first grade class.  (From my car in the school parking lot.  I’m not quite ready for him to walk to school alone.  Give me a few years.)  Nicky watched some movies.

Tuesday morning at 2:00am, Nicky’s Fever broke.  He stayed home, though (that pesky “24-hours fever-free” rule), and The Fever returned mid-day.  We watched the Real Star Wars trilogy.  That evening, Jason and I came down with Fevers (both of us), chills (me), and a sore throat (him).  Wednesday through Friday found me missing the school bus stop in front of our house in Georgia desperately, as we took turns getting a surprisingly healthy Kalen to and from school.  It also found the remaining three of us holed up in the living room with an odd assortment of The Today Show, Jason’s work lap top (he’s still contracting = no paid sick time = EARN, Baby!), Phineas and Ferb, books, quilts, pillows, The Deadliest Catch, and I really can’t remember what else.

Everyone seems to be improving in time for at least some of us to hit a street or two for Treats tomorrow night.  (Sans adult-sized Jedi robes for Jason et moi.  *Sob*  The sacrifices one makes for illness.)  My pesky Fever lingers on.  It’s little more than an annoyance, causing wooziness whenever I stand up long enough to, say, load the dishwasher, take a shower, or walk into the school to pick Kalen up from his after-school Nature Club.  Given its obvious efforts to keep me from accomplishing anything beyond becoming addicted to the adventures of Sig Hansen and crew, I’m tempted to christen our version of h1n1 The Sloth Flu.

See?  It even sounds less menacing.  The Sloth Flu.  Sloths are slow.  (Who among us has ever seen a sloth race at the county fair?)  Certainly we can all outrun this pandemic before it gets off the ground.

*Yes, yes, I know this flu can be very dangerous and deadly.  It hasn’t been for us, though, and we are grateful.  Seriously, that ‘99-’00 (I had it over The New Millennium New Years, for crying out loud!  And our anniversary!  And I was pregnant!) flu really knocked me for a loop, so that’s my basis for comparison.